I like the idea of Kanban and 3x weekly standups/status.
VS
Sprints and daily standups.
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Daily standups are too often, not enough updates, and it feels more like pressure than utility for the engineers.
Sprints, while helping keep multiple teams working on a single "epic" or "feature" in sync, also feel like an arbitrary slice of time vs. letting people work on things at the pace they are comfortable at. Finish early? Careful taking new work in, it will look bad to bring new things into the sprint and not finish.
Take an extra day on a story due to some complications? That's fine if it's middle of sprint. But rollover into new sprint? Oh gosh, what will that do to our sprint report?
Time estimations, maintaining backlogs of work and prioritizing, and documenting work done are all great. But some of it has too much ritual to it.
> Careful taking new work in, it will look bad to bring new things into the sprint and not finish
yep. Furthermore, there are many other perverse incentives that I noticed, but one stands out: the incentive not to take on risky or difficult stories out of fear that if it is not finished by the "committed" date (end of sprint), you will be tarred and shamed during the sprint review.
VS
Sprints and daily standups.
---
Daily standups are too often, not enough updates, and it feels more like pressure than utility for the engineers.
Sprints, while helping keep multiple teams working on a single "epic" or "feature" in sync, also feel like an arbitrary slice of time vs. letting people work on things at the pace they are comfortable at. Finish early? Careful taking new work in, it will look bad to bring new things into the sprint and not finish.
Take an extra day on a story due to some complications? That's fine if it's middle of sprint. But rollover into new sprint? Oh gosh, what will that do to our sprint report?
Time estimations, maintaining backlogs of work and prioritizing, and documenting work done are all great. But some of it has too much ritual to it.